Free The Road of Bones by Anne Fine Page A

anything he let drop would be reported back.
    I even wondered if I should confess to him. A dozen times or more I thought of putting down the axe and saying, ‘Listen, there’s no need to keep your beak so tightly buttoned in front of me. I wasn’t sent by the commissar. I lied in fright. I’m just a runaway with no papers, wondering how to get word to my family and trying to work up the courage to move on.’
    But I kept silent. After all, Maria might have snapped, ‘Why should I worry what I say? What’s left to lose?’ But once she learned I’d stumbled on their hovel purely by accident, she might think differently. Simple enough to creep up on a boy while he slept, stave in his head and hide his body in a ditch to keep him from blurting out secrets.
    I knew I couldn’t stay. But surely the more I could learn about what was going on in the countryside around me, the better I’d be able to fool the curious later about where I was going, and why.
    It wasn’t easy, though. The pair of them stubbornly pretended never to hear, or understand, my questions. I think they thought that, even to have stayed, I must have somehow discounted their first strong outburst at the commissar – perhaps put it down to grief. From the moment he handed me my first dipper of water and she pointed out the heap ofsacks that was to be my bed, it was as if they were starting afresh with me, as careful and as guarded as anyone else.
    But I was patient. I think I guessed that, like my grandmother, these two had lived for far too long through times when people were free to say exactly what they wanted. They couldn’t play this silent game for ever.
    And I was right. For as I gradually won their goodwill by doing all the things they couldn’t manage, their guard did begin to slip.
    Tiredness helped. All day they’d act like two old prisoners in some dank cell who thought it wiser always to speak blandly or well of the jailor. Darkness would gather round the wretched cottage, and suddenly, even without prompting, I’d find that one or the other was freely spilling out a stream of bile about the miseries of their existence.
    One night in particular, Maria lost patience – first with me, then with discretion. All day she’d been complaining about the pains in her legs. She’d snapped at me when I rose, and when I was going out into the forest, and when I came back again.
    At supper time she handed me the usual bowl. The swirling mess inside gave off a smell so rank I held it further away.
    â€˜So what’s in this? Stewed rat?’
    â€˜Next time, bring grain with you,’ she told me sourly. ‘Then I’ll bake bread.’
    â€˜Eat it,’ said Igor calmly. ‘Some days we think ourselves lucky to be sucking the meat off bats’ wings. So while there’s anything at all in your bowl, have the good sense to work your jaws harder than your eyes.’
    I stirred the ghastly broth. The bones that swirled in it were needle-thin. I lifted up the spoon, and with it came a stinking moth-grey lump. ‘Is it some crow you found lying in the clearing, dead from old age?’
    Maria snapped, ‘If you’d prefer fat roasted wood-pigeon, catch it yourself. Soon we’ll be chewing sweat out of old rags.’ She saw my shudder. ‘Oh, yes!’ she scoffed. ‘What would you know of hunger, little commissar’s boy? My grandfather stayed alive through one bad winter scraping out the hooves of his starved horse, then chewing on the horn.’
    But feeling so ravenous had made me outspoken. I pushed the bowl away. ‘I’ve worked all day. Do you think I can stay alive on slop like this?’ I braved an echo of the two brothers in uniform I’d overheard on the train. ‘There’s been no drought round here. No crop disease, either. Surely there must be wheat somewhere in this province. Or is it that famine is now made